Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps.

Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.

The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

By religion I mean perfected manhood,--the quickening of the soul by the influence of the Divine Spirit.

The gravest events dawn with no more noise than the morning star makes in rising. All great developments complete themselves in the world and modestly wait in silence, praising themselves never, and announcing themselves not at all. We must be sensitive, and sensible, if we would see the beginnings and endings of great things. That is our part.

Every boy wants someone older than himself to whom he may go in moods of confidence and yearning. The neglect of this child's want by grown people . . . is a fertile source of suffering.